_Met_. I am of the contrary opinion for the very same reason. But that does not matter. Give me your attention for a moment. I deny that life itself, _i.e._, the mere sensation of existence, has anything pleasurable or desirable in its nature. But we all wish for the other thing, also called life; I mean strength, and numerous sensations. Thus, all activity, and every strong and lively passion, provided it be neither disagreeable nor painful, pleases us simply because it is strong and lively, although it possess no other pleasurable attributes. Now these men, whose life normally lasts only forty years, that is, half the time granted by nature to other men, would experience every moment an intensity of life, twice as strong as ours, because their growth, maturity, and decline are accomplished twice as rapidly as with us. Their energy of life therefore ought to be twice as intense as ours at every moment of their existence. And to this greater intensity there must correspond a more lively activity of the will, more vivacity and animation. Thus they experience in less time the same quantity of life as we have. And the fewer years that these favoured people spend on the earth are so well filled that there is no sensible vacuum; whereas this same quantity of life is insufficient to vivify a term twice as long. Their actions and sensations, diffused over so limited a space, can duly occupy all their existence; but our longer life is constantly divided by protracted intervals devoid of all activity and lively passion. And since existence itself is in no sense desirable, but only in so far as it is happy; and since good or evil fortune is not measurable by the number of our days; I conclude that the life of these people, though shorter than ours, is much the richer in pleasures, or what are so called. Their life must then be preferable to ours, or even to that of the earliest kings of Assyria, Egypt, China, India, and other countries, who are said to have lived thousands of years. So that, far from being desirous of immortality, I am content to leave it to fishes, which are by Leeuwenhoek believed to be immortal, provided they are neither eaten by us nor their fellows. Instead of delaying the development of the body, in order to lengthen life, as Maupertuis[4] proposed, I would rather accelerate it until the duration of our life was as short as that of the insects called ephemerals; which insects, although the most aged does not live beyond a single day, nevertheless preside over three generations before they die. If it were so, then there would at least be no time for ennui. What do you think of my reasoning?